People of all faith: conversion challenge. Can you convince me?

The bottom line here is that faith is a gift of God, and generally that gift comes through the hearing of scripture. So you either have it or you don't. It looks like you don't (at least not yet).

There really isn't much to say to you, some 5 year old's have more faith than you do and have no problem with it. Too bad that you don't have a decent understanding of Bible prophecy. It's pretty amazing all of the prophecies which have already been fulfilled and all of the prophecies which we see on the verge of being fulfilled now - 2,000 - 3,000 years after they have been written! One third of the Bible is prophecy, and only God could foretell such accurate and detailed knowledge of the distant future.

EDIT:

Prophecy is spread out over quite a few books in the Bible - the Bible is actually one book with one theme. As for free will, you are taking a very simplistic approach. Yes, we make whatever decisions we will and are responsible for them. Yet, God is utterly sovereign over His creation. The tension between man's freewill and God's utter sovereignty over those freewill decisions are beyond our understanding. Just know that both are valid.

I will try, though there's no real reason why you should believe in God. Here goes:

1. My experience has told me that improbable and relevant events occur after prayer on a particular topic. This could of course be pareidolia.

2. We have religious experience. Although all experiences could be fake, there are no broad categories of experience which are always fake, so if the experience of the divine, which clearly can be created, for example, by electrical stimulation of the temporal lobe, is always fake it is in a special category unlike any other kind of experience. What would be the point of that from the perspective of interacting with the real world?

3. Whereas complexity can easiy be explained by a combination of billions of years of evolution and the operation of blind chance in a vast Cosmos, what can't be explained is how an ape which evolved on the African savannah developed the capability to understand the workings of the furthest stars and the origin of the Universe. It has no evolutionary need to understand that. So, how come our brains are able to be that flexible? On the whole, organisms are only able to do what they have to in order to thrive since more than that would be a waste of energy and selected against. Why, then, are we able to understand the Universe in such a sophisticated manner?

Don't worry about it though, as there's nothing wrong with being atheist.

Try Buddhism again. The RIGHT way.

You do not flirt with Buddhism. You go and listen to a teacher for 3-5 years and do the practices that you are given. It is YOUR insight, gained from the observation of a meditatively-trained mind, that indicates what reality is.

Personal experience is the foundation of Buddhism.

There is no belief involved. Yes, there are teachings, but you are not to accept them unless your experience suggests they might be so.

And once you have been doing Buddhism LONG enough, you stop needing belief. Yu live in the moment and you believe WHAT the moment is irrelevant. You stop caring about artificial designations such as being a believer, or being an atheist. Both are nothing more than seeking security by hanging onto a self-label.

And besides, since neither of us were THERE at the moment of creation (assuming there ever WAS a “moment of creation”), any suppositions about creation are only our own prejudicial preferences.

Buddhists learn to relax in the moment .. and that includes relaxing into anxiety so that there is no longer a need to label.

It is by learning to relax that we free ourselves from suffering.

Until you have been doing Buddhism, as guided by an experienced teacher, for 3-10 years, you have no idea.

Convert? That has no place in Buddhism. Believe what you experience, since that is the only true reality you can have. But until you have stopped hiding from your fears and dislikes, you cannot SEE clearly.

Life is NOT about convictions or reasoning … reality rests in our “being”, not in the ideas we fool ourselves with. You will never touch reality as long as you are caught up in left-brain rationalizations.

I am agnostic but i try to make you more flexible. In science nothing whose existance can't be proved implicates either it doesn't exist nor it exists. So we can say enything. Here the conclusion. There are lots of extraordinary events that aren't explained yet, some of which sound to regurd the religion cultures. There are exinted civilities that shown an incredible knowledge whose origin is a mistery and more and more incredible other things. But, again, we can't say nothing. Saying "God doesn't exist" or "God exists" means trying to run away from the doubt. What is more scaring of the doubt? Everything we can say is that "I believe in God because I want to believe" or "I don't believe in God because I don't find reasons to". It is just subjective. Choosing to don't believe is choosing a life style and saying "I dont need to believe and I don't understand why to believe". Faith means believing without any proof, just trusting the words someone said.

A very well-phrased, articulate post Mr. O. But I think you know as well as most of us here that since no proof or objective evidence of the existence of any kind of god exists, there is no likelihood of someone coming along and introducing some kind of new information on the subject that's going to convince you or any of us. If there were, we would have heard about it by this time. It's not going to happen, and it's unreasonable to assume it might.

All you are saying is that you refuse to follow your reason and you do follow your will. That is the essence of why a person goes to Hell.

If 2+3=4 and I am convinced I do not entertain fools who say I should be open-minded and it really equals 6.

You lost your faith through pride and I hope you do not die that way.

I don’t think you are an atheist, but you do seem to qualify as an agnostic, which is similar, and actually what most claimed atheists are, whether they admit it or not. In many cases the division line is minute, but to be a total atheist, one has to suggest that he knows all of the huge sphere of available known knowledge, and of the possibly even greater sphere of unknown knowledge.

Even the most snotty of atheists are reluctant to go that far, because at that point their argument can be easily tested, and they would fail, and then have to admit some agnosticism.

I suggest you examine the potential of alternatives.

The Evolution Theory is easily destroyed by observation of the facts. Don’t take my word for it, but examine the claims of the theory, then look at the conflicting evidence. These are generously supplied by recent favorites like David Berlinski, and Douglas Axe. Exposure of this has been accomplished by scientists who have no axe to grind, and some of them are like you, agnostic, or are at least preferential to a secular worldview (Berlinski is one of these).

Seeding of Life became popular among some whose scientific examination of factual evidence led to the necessity of a designer, and could not or would not accept a “God figure” for whatever reason. The problem with this concept is a continuing necessity for a First Cause, and a circular reasoning always backfires to this… If there is a design, there had to be a designer, and no matter how many generations back, the object created cannot exceed the intellect of the creator, and you come back to where you started, admitting a First Cause. The same thing applies to the other theories (like the multiverse, and various others) all of which are figments of fanciful imagination trying to elude the elephant in the room.

I don't rely on faith to know God exists.

I need only to look at creation and all that does exist, and know that this is not possibly the product of chance, time and matter. I know this for the simple mathematical impossibility of one protein synthesizing itself (one to 10 to the 77th power) … or even less… the chance that several at once could assemble themselves to become the DNA of anything… that would then spring to life on its own.

Logic then assumes a First Cause. Design beyond the comprehension of man suggests that the First Cause is far greater than man. It doesn't require faith. What requires faith is that the First Cause had a purpose for creating what He did, and provided a way for man to commune with Him as he was originally designed to.

The reason THAT requires faith is because we then have to believe he did this for us, and seeing what we have become, you have to wonder why He would. Nonetheless, here we are.

You have asked that the Bible not be quoted in this response, but the Bible itself explains why you need it to explain the rest of faith. The Bible says faith comes by hearing (most choose not to listen) and hearing comes by the Word of God (which often requires a teacher to explain it, and a willing student to hear it). Thus I fully understand why you do not want to hear, or read, or understand the path to your own salvation. You have simply chosen otherwise. Now I ask you to do what took me 48 years to realize (I’m now 61).

You can try to escape it, and some have numbed their senses to the point where they no longer heed the need to search it out. Some have followed their own leanings so far, that their conscience no longer restricts them from the things they desire to do, and in order to keep those, they will quickly discard this teaching, and forget the potential of consequences for such a cavalier approach.

Some simply don’t want to face God. No matter, because I know in my heart that some day they will, and I will be able to say I did what I could to change their heart.

I dont have to convince you of anything

you will convinced without me saying a word

But, God wants us to

See how easy that was?

Your wish will be satisfied

and it will not turn out the way you like it

Sure I was

5 When, now, both Silas and Timothy came down from Mac‧e‧do′ni‧a, Paul began to be intensely occupied with the word, witnessing to the Jews to prove that Jesus is the Christ. 6 But after they kept on opposing and speaking abusively, he shook out his garments and said to them: “Let YOUR blood be upon YOUR own heads. I am clean. From now on I will go to people of the nations

11 “Into whatever city or village YOU enter, search out who in it is deserving, and stay there until YOU leave. 12 When YOU are entering into the house, greet the household; 13 and if the house is deserving, let the peace YOU wish it come upon it; but if it is not deserving, let the peace from YOU return upon YOU. 14 Wherever anyone does not take YOU in or listen to YOUR words, on going out of that house or that city shake the dust off YOUR feet

I dont think you have the Christian spirit, why say what you asked without using scripture

Then like a hypocrite, throw me scripture?

I think you meant to say "you will be convinced without me saying a word". And that last sentence is either a veiled threat or smug satisfaction (that's how it reads anyway), neither of which are in the christian spirit.

O · 1 min ago

Listen, I am not the type that looks down on age,

But I have scares that are almost 4 times older then you

At least you are trying to be honest with yourself.

You do however see things from the perspective of your Catholic upbringing, which taints your thinking.

I will simply state this about your belief. It is a blind faith. Atheism is the belief there is no God. Seeing though it is impossible to prove a negative, how do you hold to this belief with no supporting evidence whatsoever? In other words, your position is illogical, and hence irrational. You want people to challenge your position with evidence to the contrary, while limiting the scope of that evidence. I challenge you to present the evidence to back your claim, that there is no God.

First of all, thanks for saying you have a belief. Most atheists deny having a belief because they cannot defend their belief.

In an atheistic world view, nothing of any import is real. Love, courage, honesty, compassion, justice, etc. They are all evolution-provided means to control us. Love is just some chemicals in the brain that force us to do things. We're essentially drug addicts seeking a fix.

If you accept that without a fight, then I'm done.